According to Pasolini, ‘we don’t have a body, we are a body’. Accepting this principle, in a society that traditionally tends to separate mind from body, would change both the social and the linguistic taboos. Changing the body, in fact, would modify also the perception of foul language. With Amy e Klara, Marc Bolhen explores this principle using synthetic speech. The involved bodies are two pink boxes, two machines, which speak with a feminine voice generated by ‘text to speech’ and automated speech recognition softwares. Should one box start to speak, the other might respond. One bad word leads another and the outcome is rather unpredictable. There are many similar artworks based on ‘text to speech’ application, like A Soap Opera for Imacs, Chant or Virologic Conditioning, but the choice of this slice of language makes Bohlen’s work original. If the synthetic speech has achieved such levels of ‘naturalness’ that it can be confused with the voice of living human being, it is usually highly selective and optimized for commerce, plain, without exclamations. The fact that two machines quarrel and use foul language makes the situation more realistic and, according to the author, gives a real example of the future interactions between machines and human beings. — Valentina Culatti, NEURAL

The Digital Art Weeks 2006, organized by members of the Computer Science Department of the ETH Zurich, is looking for up to twelve persons who are interested in contemporary music and art who would be interested in participating on a voluntary basis for the performance of a new Mobil-Music work under the direction of Sound Artist, Art Clay using GPS and mobile computer technologies.

Aesthetically, the work China Gates for tuned gongs and Wrist Conductor is rooted in works for open public space and belongs to a series of works, which celebrate the use of innovative mobile technologies to explore public space and audience. The work is technically based on possibilities of synchronizing a group of performers using the clock pulse emitted by satellites. The GPS Wrist Conductor signals each player when to hit the gong. An intense rippling effect results as the players gradually move around the park and the music of the gongs shift back and fourth from intense chords to exotic melodies.Continue reading

Copyright-abusing-machine and creative intelligence instrument at the same time, sCrAmBlEd?HaCkZ! is described by its creator Sven Konig, as a bastard between database and as a sensitive composer for radical plagiarism. sCrAmBlEd?HaCkZ! attempts to develop an artistic strategy that could shed some light on evident but confusing problems of intellectual property.

The mind music machine is a software which consists of a pre-analyzer, a database and a synthesizer. Using the pre-analyzer it is possible to automatically split up audio material into small musically and rhythmically meaningful snippets. The sonic properties of each snippet are extracted and saved in a database so that a soundpool of samples referenced by their sound signatures is available.

The synthesizer analyzes an audio input stream and again splits it up into small snippets and calculates their sound signatures. For everyone of the input snippets the best match out of all the snippets in the database is found and each input snippet is continuously replaced by the best matching (most similar-sounding) snippet from the database. The audio input, which can be other music or as I use it, just human voice, is virtually describing music to be automatically constructed out of samples found in the database. Video. Performance during the VIPER festival, in Basel, Gare du Nord, 18 March 2006. [blogged by Regine on we-make-money-not-art]

Between Performer and Radio Time

This project is an adaptation of Time Server which was first performed for the Foundry’s Late Late Breakfast Show, broadcast in London on Resonance 104.4FM between midday and 1pm on July 22.

The work entailed Simon Pope walking from the NTP (network time protocol) server at University of London Computer Centre in Guilford Place, London, to the Foundry in Old Street, London, ‘taking the time’ and delivering it to the radio show from where it was broadcast live on FM radio. The aim of the work was to investigate the interaction between ‘clock time’ and ‘circadian time’, using radio broadcast’s conventional standardized time as a gauge.

In Taking The Time For A Walk–by Simon Pope in collaboration with The Foundry–a radio broadcast of ‘clock time’ is ‘returned’ to the Foundry’s radio show. Simon Pope will walk from the line of the meridian as it intersects London, ‘talking the time’ with him as he goes; this ‘time’, as moderated by the ‘body clock’ and movement of the performer, then becomes the standard time that the radio station uses in its radio broadcast. [a NODE.London event]

Participate

Celebrate nine years with free103point9 this March: free103point9 started on March 7, 1997 with a show at a loft near the second L stop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with DJ Singe, I-Sound, DJ Matt Mikas, and others.

For nine years, free103point9 has strived to promote transmission artists, and those who wish to use radio in a creative way, as well as serving as a community resource for New York. Our “Radio Lab” education program has enabled others, and free103point9 Online Radio and our extensive online Audio Archives reach around the world.

We urge everyone to celebrate nine years of free103point9 by adding an event of your own to our Schedule web page, and spread the word about whatever activism, sound art, or performance you are working on:Continue reading

Shit! I forgot the iPod!

Electroprobes: Electric babblings. Magnetic hums. Inaudible whistles. Quite a while ago, objects started to speak. With time, they grew smarter. They now have a rich vocabulary. They think and dream… Shit! I forgot the iPod!, by Troika, is a electromagnetic environment specially created for the electroprobes. The installation presents a chaotic assemblage of electric/electronic objects, commonly found in the houses of the 21 st century: electric appliances, mobile phones chargers, DVD players and transformers.

The inherent order behind this chaotic assemblage is revealed by the electroprobes. The various objects are arranged by their electromagnetic tunes in order to create a magnetic “orchestra” that the user is able to hear with the probes. We wanted to reveal their dreams and inaudible dialogues, while creating an alternative taxonomy of the objects in an apparently chaotic sound organ.Continue reading